Champagne Tours and Holidays in France
Champagne is a small, cool, chalky corner of north-eastern France that has given its name to the most tightly regulated wine on earth. Reims and Épernay are its two capitals, about half an hour apart, with the vineyards of the Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Blancs between them and miles of Gallo-Roman chalk workings beneath.
We come here because it rewards a slow look. Our Champagne holiday flies out, settles you in one 4-star hotel for six nights, and takes you out each day to the houses, the vineyard villages and the cathedral towns, with tastings as you go and lunch or dinner included on most days.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Champagne Tours
Yes. The tastings are part of the visits rather than the point of them, and portions are small; you can taste a little, water is always available, and nothing is measured. Alongside the cellars there is Reims cathedral, the Avenue de Champagne, Hautvillers and Châlons-en-Champagne, plus the vineyard landscape itself, which is at its best on a clear afternoon. Several people on every departure come mainly for the towns.
The itinerary includes a guided tour and tasting at Épernay, a visit to Reims with a tasting, and time at Hautvillers and Châlons-en-Champagne. The individual houses can change from one departure to the next, because visits are booked in advance and the producers' own calendars shift, particularly around harvest. Ask us and we will tell you who is confirmed for the departure you are considering.
Yes, and most people do. The tour includes return flights with hold luggage, so bottles need to be packed carefully in the hold rather than carried into the cabin; wine sleeves or a few layers of clothing do the job. Many houses will sell you a sturdy card carrier. UK personal allowances for wine brought back from France do change, so check the current HMRC guidance before you travel, or ask us.
Moderate amounts, in short stretches. Cellar visits usually mean a flight of stone steps down and a level walk of ten or fifteen minutes through the galleries, and the town centres of Reims, Épernay and Châlons are covered on foot over cobbles and pavement. There is no hill walking and the coach is never far away. If you would like the detail for a particular day, tell us what you need and we will go through the itinerary with you.
The three grapes and the second fermentation
Only three grapes matter here in any quantity: Chardonnay, which gives the wine its length and its citrus edge; Pinot Noir, which gives it body; and Pinot Meunier, the workhorse of the Marne Valley that softens a blend and makes it drinkable sooner. Almost every bottle is a blend of all three, and of several villages and several years, which is why the cellar master's job is the most respected in the region.
The bubbles arrive in the bottle, not the tank. A still base wine is bottled with a little sugar and yeast, sealed, and left in the cold to ferment a second time, sometimes for years. The sediment is worked down into the neck by turning each bottle a fraction at a time, frozen out, and replaced with a measured dose of sweetness that decides whether the finished wine is brut, extra brut or something richer. Tastings make a great deal more sense once you have seen this happening.
Reims, Épernay and the villages between
Reims is the grander of the two towns. Its cathedral crowned the kings of France for the best part of a thousand years, Charles VII among them with Joan of Arc in attendance, and the Chagall windows in the east end are worth the crick in the neck. Beneath the Butte Saint-Nicaise the great houses store their bottles in crayères, chalk pits cut by Roman quarrymen and later used as air-raid shelters.
Épernay is smaller and entirely given over to wine. The Avenue de Champagne is a straight run of nineteenth-century mansions with tens of millions of bottles resting under the road. North of it lies Hautvillers, the hillside village where Dom Pérignon was cellarer at the abbey and where the wrought-iron shop signs still show the trade of each house. Châlons-en-Champagne, quieter again, has canals, timbered houses and a fine collegiate church.
What visiting the houses is like
A cellar visit follows a fairly settled pattern: a short talk, a walk through the galleries, then a seated tasting of two or three wines. Expect the cellars to be cold, around 10 to 12 degrees whatever the weather outside, so a jumper or jacket is worth carrying in July as well as in March. Many houses are reached by a flight of stone steps, and the floors can be damp underfoot.
Tastings are generous rather than large, and nobody minds if you leave some in the glass or ask for water instead. Growers' cellars in the villages are plainer and often more personal than the big houses in Reims; between them you get a proper sense of how the region works.
- Sensible flat shoes with grip for cellar floors and cobbles
- A layer for the cellars, even in high summer
- Small change or a card if you want to buy at the door
